TikTok Ads Monitor - New Competitor Ads Tracker

Track your competitors' TikTok ads on autopilot. Add the brands and keywords you care about, put the actor on a schedule, and every run returns only the ads that are new since the last check, with the video creative, ad copy, run dates and estimated audience reach. Duplicate checking is built in and free: ads you've already received are never output or charged again.

No login, no cookies, no TikTok account needed. Data comes from the public TikTok ad library.

What you get

Every new ad is one row in the dataset:

• Creative: direct video URL, cover image and any additional images
• Ad copy: the ad text shown with the creative
• Advertiser: the advertiser's name as declared to TikTok, plus its stable advertiser ID (advBizId)
• Ad library link: a public link to the ad's TikTok ad library page
• Run dates: when the ad was first and last shown
• Estimated audience reach: TikTok's disclosed audience band (e.g. 10K-100K), plus impressions and spend where TikTok discloses them
• Monitoring fields: which advertiser or keyword matched (target), status (new, baseline or existing), isNew and detectedAt

Each run also writes a run summary (the OUTPUT record in the Key-value store) with counts of ads checked, new ads found and rows output for every advertiser and keyword, so you can see at a glance which competitor launched what.

Use cases

• Competitor ad monitoring: get alerted the day a rival launches a new TikTok campaign
• Creative swipe file: automatically collect every new TikTok ad creative in your niche
• Messaging and offer tracking: spot new promotions, product launches and positioning shifts
• Agency client reporting: run one monitor per client and send each a weekly list of new competitor ads
• Market and trend research: watch a keyword like protein powder to see every new advertiser entering a category

How to use

1. Add one or more Advertisers to monitor (e.g. Gymshark) and/or Keywords to monitor (e.g. protein powder)
2. Leave Only output new ads on
3. Run the actor once. This first run records the ads that are currently live as your baseline. They're output with status: "baseline", or turn on Skip output on the first run to record them silently and pay nothing per ad
4. Put the actor on a schedule (see below). Every later run outputs only ads that are new since monitoring started

Tips

• Monitor ID keeps separate memories of already-seen ads. Use one ID per client or project (e.g. client-acme) so monitors don't interfere. Change it to start over with a fresh baseline.
• To lock onto one exact advertiser, paste its ID from the TikTok ad library "See all ads" link after a pipe: GYMSHARK LTD | 7647240890083328016. Otherwise the best-matching advertiser is picked on the first run and remembered.
• Max ads per advertiser/keyword (default 50) limits how deep each check goes. Raise it for very active advertisers.
• Turn Only output new ads off to get every live ad each run, with isNew marking the fresh ones.

Run it on a schedule

1. In Apify Console, open Schedules → Create new
2. Set how often to check, e.g. daily at 9:00 (0 9 * * *) or every 6 hours (0 */6 * * *)
3. Under Actors, add this actor and paste in the same input you used for your first run, including the same Monitor ID
4. Save. Each scheduled run picks up where the last one stopped

Daily checks suit most brands. Very large advertisers that launch dozens of ads a day are best checked every few hours.

Get alerts in Slack, email or your own app

• Slack: on the actor's Integrations tab, add the Slack integration and post a message to a channel when a run succeeds. Link to the run's dataset so your team can open the new ads.
• Email: add the email integration on the Integrations tab to receive a message with the results after each run.
• Webhooks, Zapier, Make or n8n: add a webhook on the Integrations tab for the Run succeeded event. Your endpoint receives the run details, and the new ads are at the dataset items URL (.../datasets/{defaultDatasetId}/items). Skip runs with nothing new by checking totals.output in the OUTPUT summary record.
• Google Sheets: use the Google Sheets integration to append every run's new ads to a running sheet.

Output format

Each dataset record:

{
  "monitorId": "default",
  "target": "Gymshark",
  "targetType": "advertiser",
  "status": "new",
  "isNew": true,
  "detectedAt": "2026-10-01T05:31:44.265Z",
  "adId": "1876412004121618",
  "adLibraryUrl": "https://library.tiktok.com/ads/detail/?ad_id=1876412004121618",
  "advertiser": "GYMSHARK LTD",
  "resolvedAdvertiserName": "GYMSHARK LTD",
  "advBizId": "7647240890083328016",
  "adText": null,
  "imageUrl": null,
  "videoUrl": "https://library.tiktok.com/api/v1/cdn/...",
  "coverImageUrl": "https://p16-common-sign.tiktokcdn.com/...",
  "images": [],
  "adFormat": "2",
  "auditStatus": "1",
  "estimatedAudience": "10K-100K",
  "impressions": 0,
  "spend": null,
  "firstShownAt": "2026-10-01T00:01:49.000Z",
  "lastShownAt": "2026-10-01T00:01:49.000Z"
}

Run summary (OUTPUT in the Key-value store):

{
  "monitorId": "default",
  "onlyNew": true,
  "totals": { "targets": 3, "adsScanned": 36, "newAds": 1, "baselineAds": 0, "output": 1, "errors": 0 },
  "targets": [
    { "target": "Gymshark", "targetType": "advertiser", "baseline": false, "adsScanned": 24, "newAds": 1, "pushed": 1, "stopReason": "no new ads on page" }
  ]
}

How "new" is decided

An ad counts as new when it hasn't been output by this monitor before and TikTok first showed it on or after the day you started monitoring. Older ads that a check happens to come across for the first time are recorded quietly as existing and not output, so the "new" list contains real new launches, not old ads resurfacing. The monitor remembers up to the 5,000 most recent ad IDs per advertiser or keyword.

Free plan limits

To keep the actor available to everyone, free runs are limited to:

• 25 ads and 3 brands or keywords per run
• 1 run every 30 minutes
• 3 runs per day

If you hit a limit, the run finishes with a message explaining what happened and nothing is charged. Upgrade to a paid Apify plan to remove these limits.

A daily schedule fits comfortably inside these limits.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

• Per new ad output to your dataset. Ads you've already received, and ads skipped as already seen, are free.
• A small fee per advertiser or keyword checked, so a scheduled check that finds nothing new costs very little.

FAQ

Does the first run cost more? The first run outputs the current live ads as a baseline (capped by Max ads per advertiser/keyword). Turn on Skip output on the first run if you only want ads launched from now on.

Can I monitor many brands at once? Yes. Add as many advertisers and keywords as you like; each one is checked and tracked separately.

What happens if a run is cut short? Ads already output are remembered, and anything not yet output is picked up by the next run.